


Were You A Good Man?

by eyesofheaven



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Brief Mention of Hazel Levesque, Elysium, M/M, Multi, Past Character Death, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 03:18:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19123495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyesofheaven/pseuds/eyesofheaven
Summary: The Gods decided a now twenty-five year old Percy Jackson would be the perfect candidate to complete a new mission to Greece to rescue the spirits of long since dead Greek and Roman soldiers. One thing lead to another and soon he was face to face with a Manticore, a creature he hadn’t fought since he was thirteen years old. With a sigh and the uncapping of his trusted sword Riptide, he muttered a quiet,“I’m way too old for this.”or the one where the Greek ocean side is the last place you want to be if you're Percy Jackson





	Were You A Good Man?

☁☁☁☁

Percy was in his mid-twenties when he finally died.

After all the wars had been fought and every major monster defeated, he had decided to go to college and settle down with Annabeth. The both of them had been surprised a while down the road that their relationship didn’t really work the way they anticipated it would. It was strange finding out they weren’t romantically compatible after facing things like death and the end of humanity together. Eventually it became clear to both of them that things would be better if they went back to being friends. Just friends.

Nearly four years after their split was when the Gods decided a now twenty-five year old Percy Jackson would be the perfect candidate to complete a new mission to Greece to rescue the spirits of long since dead Greek and Roman soldiers. One thing lead to another and soon he was face to face with a Manticore, a creature he hadn’t fought since he was thirteen years old. With a sigh and the uncapping of his trusted sword Riptide, he muttered a quiet,

“I’m way too old for this.”

Little did he know they’d be some of his last words.

He’d come with reinforcements of Annabeth, Piper McLean and Nico di Angelo. Thinking back on it, maybe he should’ve brought someone who had extensive knowledge on healing, someone like Nico’s boyfriend, Will Solace. Percy thought he would be fine. It was supposed to be an easy mission, but he knew if he didn’t fight the Manticore, there was a chance his friends wouldn’t be able to take it down because they didn’t come prepared for a fight.

He thought he was okay after the fight. Nothing hurt too badly and he was okay walking back over to his team. He had a somewhat strained smile on his face and his knees were wobbly but it made enough sense. He could’ve just been tired.

But his legs just got worse as he got closer to them and there was a shooting pain up his back.

‘Oh Gods’ he thought silently before he collapsed in front of them. His back felt warm and wet under the shining sun. He just thought it was sweat but if Annabeth’s guttural scream counted for anything, it meant it definitely wasn’t sweat.

“Nico, where are our bags!?” Annabeth cried, becoming frantic as she tried to find something to help Percy.

“I don’t know, they just vanished as soon as the Manticore showed up!” he said, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. He hadn’t seen a Manticore since his childhood and seeing another one so many years later made his blood run cold.

“Oh Gods… _**this**_ was the quest. Percy… he was fated to die in the homeland. It can’t be a coincidence.” Piper says, her chest shaking as she’s reminded of how Jason died. It’s uncanny to how Jason died and she feels sick. Annabeth is peeling Percy off the ground and pulling him into her lap. He’s covered in his own blood and there’s a knot forming on the temple of his cheek.

“You’ve always been too headstrong for your own good, seaweed brain.”

Her eyes are starting to swim with tears, her heart breaking with every ragged breath he manages.

“You… you always deserved better than me, wise girl…” he says with a weak smile.

The smell of his blood is strong but Annabeth isn’t even considering moving away from him. He keeps breathing shallowly for a few minutes after he talks to Annabeth. The waves of the Greek ocean lap at the sandy beach only a couple hundred of feet away from where they’re sitting. Percy weakly looks up at where Piper and Nico are standing, the sun beating down into his eyes and he swears he sees a head of golden blonde hair sticking out from behind Piper’s head and single blue eye looking at him.

“Jason?” he asks as the eye blinks closed and disappears.

“Jason?” Piper asks with an edge to her voice, looking behind her shoulder at where Percy’s eyes are trained. There’s nothing there.

“He’s here…” Percy says taking one more breath, his blood-filled lungs expanding one more time before everything goes black.

There’s a beat of silence before Nico di Angelo speaks.

“He’s gone.”

☁☁☁☁

Percy’s not too sure what’s going on when he wakes up.

He remembers being in Greece and then waking up in a house that looked almost exactly like his cabin back at Camp Half-Blood. He hadn’t been back to it since his sophomore year in college, so seeing it again brings waves of nostalgia and a sense of being home. The only difference he can see is that his personal belongings like the old Blink-182 poster he had hung up when he was in his eighth grade year and his armor are all missing. It’s odd, but he doesn’t pay it too much attention. The harpies probably just cleaned the cabin out after he stopped coming back and grew up. He stretches his arms above his head but realizes he doesn’t feel tired or sore even after waking up. He gets up from bed and looks out the window to see a landscape that is nothing like Camp Half-Blood’s.

“What in Hades’ is going on,” he whispers before he pulls some clothes on over his naked body. That’s the other weird thing, he thinks, I don’t just go to sleep naked… ever. He wants to get to the bottom of it all. What happened in Greece, why he woke up in his cabin that was also not his cabin, and why he can’t seem to connect the dots between where he was before he woke up and where he is now. He pushes his hair back with one of his hands before he leaves the cabin.

It’s incredibly bright outside but he can’t seem to pinpoint any kind of light source. He closes his eyes and breathes out a sigh he didn’t know was inside of him. The light’s like the sun though, he can feel warmth and radiance on every piece of exposed skin without feeling like he’s about to melt due to sweat. It’s almost too perfect. His eyes snap open.

“Percy Jackson?” a voice says in a bewildered tone behind him. The voice was familiar but he can’t put his finger on it until he turns around and comes face to face with Charles Beckendorf and all the air leaves his lungs.

“Oh My Gods, that’s… I couldn’t remember how I… I died. I failed my mission,” he says, covering his face with his hands and falling to his knees. Everything floods back to him. He was in Greece fighting the manticore on his mission to save the shades and spirits of fallen soldiers. He was with Annabeth, Piper and Nico and the manticore had gotten his back. He remembers seeing the sun high in the sky before everything went black and he was suddenly in the entrance of the Underworld, back in the lobby of the recording studio he had visited when he was 12. He wasn’t waiting very long before he was suddenly on the ferry to the land of the dead.

“Had the favor of two children of the death God, you did,” the voice of Charon said, “Mr. di Angelo himself came here looking for you but you hadn’t been processed yet. Made all of us promise to treat you as best as we could.”

Percy thinks he nodded at the comment, but all of it is blurry in his memory.

Then he was stood before the judges of the Underworld who all take turns naming the different quests he went on during his life, and all the noble deeds he did for the sake of Olympus and there’s a unanimous agreement: Percy Jackson deserves Elysium.

He’d always thought in life that he would ask to be reborn as soon as he died, and when he was younger he thought he’d wait for Annabeth in Elysium. Now, he’s not sure what he wants but he had agreed with Elysium for the time being. That’s when he woke up and completely forgot that he had died.

“Woah Percy, you need to calm down,” Beckendorf says, crouching to the ground and resting a hand on his shoulder. Percy takes a few seconds to close his eyes and think about what all of it means. He won't see his mom, Paul, or Estelle for decades, and he won’t see anyone from his life for the same amount if they manage to stay alive to live full lives.

“I know, I’m sorry it’s just-”

“It’s a lot to process, I get it.” Beckendorf says with a soft tone.

Percy looks at him, long and hard and realizes that visually, he’s exactly the same guy he’d left on the Princess Andromeda when he was 14. Percy had always tried to block out the hardest parts of losing his friends, especially when they knew self-sacrifice had to be made and there wasn’t any other option. He remembers that Nico had visited Beckendorf who had said he didn’t blame Percy for his death.

“It’s good to see you,” Beckendorf says, helping Percy stand back up. Percy wishes the circumstances of them meeting again weren’t so grim. Even though he knows he died protecting his friends, he’d always secretly hoped he’d be reunited with his deceased friends in the distant future, maybe once he passed away from old age or some kind of disease. He had hoped he wouldn’t ever die on a quest and break every promise he’d ever made to his mother.

“It’s been what… eleven years since I’ve seen you?” Percy says, still barely believing that any of it’s real. Beckendorf laughs and shakes his head, digging his large hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts.

“You were one of the greatest kids I’d ever met, kind of always thought you’d outlive most of us but… everyone reaches their breaking point…” Beckendorf says quietly.

Percy finally reached his own breaking point at 25 after years of quests, and battling monsters, and attending university all while helping Annabeth with executing Jason’s masterplan in New Rome. His breaking point was when the years of mental and physical exhaustion and pain all came to a point and he knew that he couldn’t carry on for very much longer. His train of thought came to halt.

“Wait, do you know Jason?” Percy practically blurts out. Beckendorf’s eyebrows knit together.

‘Like… golden fleece Jason?”

“Well, no, but he's the namesake of the Jason I’m talking about.”

“I can’t say I do… but we can go see some of the other people from Camp that are here… if you want to see them?” Beckendorf says. Percy agrees because it’s been too long since he’s seen a lot of them.

The first person they go see is Beckendorf’s wife, Silena. Percy’s unsure about how marriage actually works in the Underworld, but he was happy that they ended up together in paradise for all eternity. Percy had always hoped he’d find the same before he passed away but his schedule never really seemed to let him get anything other than work done, so making time for dating was never an option. From there they visited Lee Fletcher, Michael Yew and Ethan Nakamura. He managed to talk to all of them for a while, catching up and discussing what they’d been up to during their time in Elysium. Percy realized early on that everyone in Elysium was able to adjust their age to whatever felt most comfortable. This was only evident when he recalled that Lee Fletcher and Michael Yew had been 17 and 16 when they had died in the second Titan War, and were currently 22 and 19. Percy also found out that when he changed to his desired age, all of the scars from his life remained the same. He eventually decided on a physical age of twenty. This was mostly due to the fact that he could always decide to age if that’s what ended up appealing to him. He got the chance to tell all of them about Camp Jupiter and about how both camps came together roughly a decade ago and united the Greek and Roman people, as well as the god of both civilizations.

“I wish you guys could’ve been around to see it,” he said with a sad tone entering his voice. They all assured him that as much as they would’ve liked to see it, they were happy with their afterlives and had accepted their deaths as the years went on. 

After hours of talking to the others, he finally made his way back to his cabin. As he approached it, he could smell something that reminded him of ocean spray, the refreshing, salty scent he’d come to associate with his happiest memories and his parents.

“Long time no see, Jackson,” a voice said from the porch of his house. A figure was sat one one of the woven white chairs on the porch of his cabin. He recognized the voice even after so many years. There was no mistaking it, and it drove his heart to beat a million miles a minute.

“Jason,” he said with a huge smile spreading across his features. He couldn’t stop himself from bounding up the stairs and running to Jason with an open embrace. As soon as they came together, Percy felt like he never wanted to let go. Jason was the most recent of Percy’s friends to join the ranks of those in Elysium and seeing him again after so many years made him realize how difficult it was to lose him.

“I’d say I couldn’t believe it but of course you would end up here…” Percy said pulling away from the hug, keeping his arms on Jason’s shoulders. Jason shakes his head with a chuckle and looks up at Percy with a dazzling smile. Percy can tell that he’s older from the slightly deepened crows feet around his eyes and the freckles from staying out in the Elysium brightness for long periods of time.

“So… what happened?” Jason says as his smile falters a bit and his eyes twinkle with an unspoken sadness.

“Manticore in Greece. I was sent on a mission to try and save some shades and spirits with Annabeth, Nico and Piper.”

He kind of regrets bringing up Piper as soon as he’s said her name. Jason and she were broken up when he died.

“Everything finally caught up to you, huh?” Jason says with a soft smile, searching Percy’s face for an inkling of uncontrolled emotion. 

“I did what I had to do to make sure they survived. I don’t regret it. But… I was tired. I think I understand why the Gods knew I had to have that last battle before I… before I came here.”

“Needed their golden boy to have one last hurrah before he kicked the bucket?” Jason says with a quiet giggle that makes Percy’s heart melt. He knows he shouldn’t feel so warm around Jason but he can’t seem to help it. It doesn’t help that Jason’s become a friendlier person in death.

“Eh, something like that… although I have to say that what you did… you made an impact on us all and we didn’t know how to carry on without you,” Percy says, softly stroking his fingers against Jason’s back, “I didn’t think it was going to be so hard until I understood how much of an impact you made on all of us… the other six of us, I mean.”

Jason’s smile completely melts and is replaced by something like a grimace. 

“I had to do it I couldn’t just… I couldn’t let Piper die. We were broken up and I know now that we never had a real romantic relationship. I… I always felt like she should’ve been more of a sister to me. The breakup is what pushed me to make the choice to die and let her live her life. I wanted her to keep living and I wanted her to be happy and fall in love with someone who could love her as something more than a sister and help her realize that life is much more important than a mission.”

Percy had a similar situation with Annabeth. A lot of it came after they’d come back from Tartarus together. She’d always felt like family but the treacherous journey to the Doors of Death helped him register somewhere in his subconscious that he and Annabeth were never destined to be romantically in love with one another. He loved her with all of his heart because she made him a better person, but he knew that he only loved her in the way best friends love, or the way platonic soulmates did.

“I get it,” he says, looking at his shoes before making eye-contact with Jason again, searching his sky blue eyes for anything.

“I saw you when I died.”

Jason’s features soften and he looks back into Percy’s eyes, wrapping his arms around Percy’s waist and tilting his head as if telling Percy to go on with the story.

“After the manticore was dead and they realized I had a giant gash on my back, I collapsed. I… Annabeth held me as I went and I looked at Piper and there you were, behind her. I remembered your eyes as soon as I saw them,” he says gently.

Jason’s eyes fluttered shut and his head tilted down a bit.

“I used to be so intimidated by you, you know? You were older and everyone always talked about the great Percy Jackson and when I met you it was like… I don’t know. You kind of exceeded all the expectations I had of you and that made me so insecure about what I could do. When I died, everything from the past year kind of flashed before my eyes and it made me see that at the end of the day we weren’t super different from each other… I also realized how hot you were.”

Percy’s eyes fly open and his cheeks burn. He’s lucky the light of Elysium is emulating the look of a sunset or Jason would’ve seen how flustered he got over one comment about his appearance.

“This might not be perfect timing or even possible, but I’d love it if we got coffee sometime… as friends” he said, adding the last part in just in case Jason didn’t want to be caught dead with the son of the sea God.

“I’d love to as more than friends.” Jason says with a teasing smile.

As much as Percy wished he was still alive, continuing to see Jason’s dream fulfilled in the mortal world, he can’t deny how great it was to finally be a normal person with a normal love life (or unlife) in paradise for all eternity.

  
  


☁☁☁☁


End file.
